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Lawnmower, fresh from the box

Sat, 2007-07-07 13:36 — Jaharmi

It’s not every day that you have a new lawnmower delivered to your home via Fedex, as we did. Our new Neuton EM5.1 electric mower arrived.

I got the included lead acid battery charged, which takes a minimum of 12 hours. It was ready to go this morning, so after the baby and dog were up, I went to the garage to assemble everything. It didn’t take long to unbox the mower and put it together: the time amounted to about 10 or 15 minutes total.

Once that was done, I had to wait. It was still too early to mow. My test start indicated that the mower was not silent, producing sound equivalent to a vacuum cleaner — and enough, I thought, to disturb the neighbors if it were really early. The grass was also still a bit wet with dew. So, I delayed until later in the morning.

I mowed for about an hour and fifteen minutes on the first charge. The mower was not on the entire time, as I had to empty the grass catcher four or five times. However, I was very happy the battery gave me that kind of run time, even though it’s not supposed to hit its peak capacity until the fifth recharge or so.

I’d previously been mowing with a reel mower, which has worked pretty well, and I intend to continue using that. I like getting the exercise, and it generally produces a decent cut. However, it’s an uneven cut, leaving patches of taller grasses — which I’ve always attributed to the lack of lift you get from a circular mower’s blade and housing. The new mower, thankfully, seems to have made a difference in those spots and did so in fewer passes than our reel mower.

Overall, I’m very pleased so far. I don’t have to deal with gas, oil, sparkplugs, noise, smoke, and the like. It doesn’t require a two-year commitment to AT&T. The lawn looks good. What more could I ask for?